Photo courtesy of RCA Records New York band The Strokes, who shot to stardom with their first album Is This It, are geared up to garage-rock the Mesa Amphitheatre on Sunday night.

Once upon a time, a boarding school in Switzerland set the stage for the chance encounter between two American students that would change their lives forever.

"My parents asked me if I wanted to go there," Strokes' guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. said. "I thought it seemed kind of interesting to try out and then it wasn't for me. It didn't suit my personality. I'm glad I went because I would've never met Julian (Casablancas)."

Hammond described his brief experience at a Swiss boarding school during his early teens, which led to his acquaintanceship with Strokes singer and mastermind Julian Casablancas.

"We weren't so much friends there," Hammond said. "When you're surrounded by a bunch of foreigners that you've seen over there, you kind of latch on. ÎHello, other American, How are you doing, one that comes from the same land as

I do?'"

If you go · The Strokes play Mesa Amphitheatre Sunday night. Doors open at 6:30. Tickets are $21, and are available via all Ticketmaster outlets.

Hammond and Casablancas had both shunned a tidbit of fatherly advice behind their boarding school send-off.

"I always thought it was so funny," Hammond said, "My dad always said to me, ÎYou're going to meet someone there and later on in life, they can help you out.' I was like, ÎDad, this is a fucking lame school. Everyone tells everyone that and it never happens.' And Julian's dad told the same thing to Julian. And now, it's ironic that seven years later, I didn't talk to him and now we're in a band together and we live together. Very weird."

The Strokes, led by Casablancas, guitarist Hammond, guitarist Nick Valensi, bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti shot to international superstardom on the strength of their debut album,

2001's Is This It.

The band have become regulars in the pages of Rolling Stone and Spin, as well as countless overseas music journals such as NME and Q, and have been labeled the "poster boys for garage rock" by MTV.

That's a lot to swallow, considering the fact that these guys were relative unknowns two years ago.

"I think its something you can't control," Hammond said. "The media will latch on to people and you don't know why; it's just what happens, and you can't really control that. I don't mind it."

Hammond is more sensitive to the criticism the media hype draws.

"At first I thought it kind of sucked because I feel like there are certain people out there who want to hate us because of the attention we get," Hammond said. "That's understandable. In the long run, it won't; but I think sometimes in the short run it overshadows the fact that I think we play really good music."

The man most responsible for the music delivered is Casablancas, whose father is John Casablancas, the founder and head of the famous New York based "John Casablancas Modeling and Career Centers" and "The Elite Agency," which has chains across the country, and helped launch the careers of Naomi Campbell, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore.

It has been said, however, that father and son aren't especially close ÷ Julian Casablancas was raised separately by his mother.

Perhaps the senior Casablancas' leadership abilities rubbed off on the younger, as Hammond described the Casablancas-to-Strokes songwriting procedure.

"Sometimes he'll have parts in his head that he knows for sure that he wants," Hammond said. "He'll know that Îthis guitar has got to do this.' But then when you change from by yourself at home to a band, sometimes things change."

Casablancas' songwriting method is likened to a "captain of ship," rather than that of a "dictatorship," according to Hammond.

"It's not like he walks in and is like, ÎThis is this, this is this and we're going to have this first,'" Hammond said. "He does write the songs, he does write the music, but we definitely talk about it. He never writes something and then if someone didn't like it, it wouldn't be a song. We do talk about arrangements. We all produce and arrange, but he writes it all. "

With the smash success of their first stab at record making under their belt, The Strokes are to enter the studio early next year to record their sophomore album, which Hammond described as "half- done."

The recording process for Is This It, which was recorded before they had a record deal, was said to have been grueling, but Hammond expects a smoother ride this time around.

"Recording in general usually is pretty intense," Hammond said. "You're putting down something that's not going to change. This time, I think it will be much better because it will be our second time, so we'll have more knowledge of what we're doing."

Hammond was quoted as having said that the next Strokes album will be "the future of rock" in a major music publication. That presumptuous quote, he said, was taken out of context.

"It was taken out of a big paragraph," Hammond said. "It made sense in the paragraph. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it made sense. I just meant to say that what we do, what we sound like to me, I was trying to describe it how I thought what we sound like was modern and not old."

When the venue lights go on, Hammond is thankful to play music for a living, let alone be considered successful.

"People always say that, they say like Îbig rock band,'" Hammond said. "It really doesn't feel sometimes like a really big rock band; it feels like we're still under the radar. I always felt like really big rock bands were like, you know, how Nirvana when they went really big. I think it's cool that the people's perception of us is big. It feels great, I mean I don't know, I love playing music. I love everyone in the band, and I'm just happy that we're able to play for people."